Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Updated September 9, 2022 | Infoplease Staff

The premier prize for American poetry

The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, first given in 1922, is widely recognized as one of the biggest prizes in the American publishing industry. It's important to note that the prize is given for a published collection, rather than for individual poems. You'll find many Best Of collections dotting the list.

 

1918 Love Songs, Sara Teasdale
1919 Old Road to Paradise, Margaret Widdemer;
  Corn Huskers, Carl Sandburg
1922 Collected Poems, Edwin Arlington Robinson
1923 The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver; A Few Figs from Thistles; eight sonnets in American Poetry, 1922, A Miscellany, Edna St. Vincent Millay
1924 New Hampshire: A Poem With Notes and Grace Notes, Robert Frost
1925 The Man Who Died Twice, Edwin Arlington Robinson
1926 What's O'Clock, Amy Lowell
1927 Fiddler's Farewell, Leonora Speyer
1928 Tristram, Edwin Arlington Robinson
1929 John Brown's Body, Stephen Vincent Benét
1930 Selected Poems, Conrad Aiken
1931 Collected Poems, Robert Frost
1932 The Flowering Stone, George Dillon
1933 Conquistador, Archibald MacLeish
1934 Collected Verse, Robert Hillyer
1935 Bright Ambush, Audrey Wurdemann
1936 Strange Holiness, Robert P. T. Coffin
1937 A Further Range, Robert Frost
1938 Cold Morning Sky, Marya Zaturenska
1939 Selected Poems, John Gould Fletcher
1940 Collected Poems, Mark Van Doren
1941 Sunderland Capture, Leonard Bacon
1942 The Dust Which Is God, William Rose Benét
1943 A Witness Tree, Robert Frost
1944 Western Star, Stephen Vincent Benét
1945 V-Letter and Other Poems, Karl Shapiro
1947 Lord Weary's Castle, Robert Lowell
1948 The Age of Anxiety, W. H. Auden
1949 Terror and Decorum, Peter Viereck
1950 Annie Allen, Gwendolyn Brooks
1951 Complete Poems, Carl Sandburg
1952 Collected Poems, Marianne Moore
1953 Collected Poems, 1917–1952, Archibald MacLeish
1954 The Waking, Theodore Roethke
1955 Collected Poems, Wallace Stevens
1956 Poems—North & South, Elizabeth Bishop
1957 Things of This World, Richard Wilbur
1958 Promises: Poems, 1954–1956, Robert Penn Warren
1959 Selected Poems, 1928–1958, Stanley Kunitz
1960 Heart's Needle, William Snodgrass
1961 Times Three: Selected Verse From Three Decades, Phyllis McGinley
1962 Poems, Alan Dugan
1963 Pictures From Breughel, William Carlos Williams
1964 At the End of the Open Road, Louis Simpson
1965 77 Dream Songs, John Berryman
1966 Selected Poems, Richard Eberhart
1967 Live or Die, Anne Sexton
1968 The Hard Hours, Anthony Hecht
1969 Of Being Numerous, George Oppen
1970 Untitled Subjects, Richard Howard
1971 The Carrier of Ladders, William S. Merwin
1972 Collected Poems, James Wright
1973 Up Country, Maxine Winokur Kumin
1974 The Dolphin, Robert Lowell
1975 Turtle Island, Gary Snyder
1976 Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, John Ashbery
1977 Divine Comedies, James Merrill
1978 Collected Poems, Howard Nemerov
1979 Now and Then: Poems, 1976–1978, Robert Penn Warren
1980 Selected Poems, Donald Rodney Justice
1981 The Morning of the Poem, James Schuyler
1982 The Collected Poems, Sylvia Plath
1983 Selected Poems, Galway Kinnell
1984 American Primitive, Mary Oliver
1985 Yin, Carolyn Kizer
1986 The Flying Change, Henry Taylor
1987 Thomas and Beulah, Rita Dove
1988 Partial Accounts: New and Selected Poems, William Meredith
1989 New and Collected Poems, Richard Wilbur
1990 The World Doesn't End, Charles Simic
1991 Near Changes, Mona Van Duyn
1992 Selected Poems, James Tate
1993 The Wild Iris, Louise Gluck
1994 Neon Vernacular, Yusef Komunyakaa
1995 Simple Truth, Philip Levine
1996 The Dream of the Unified Field, Jorie Graham
1997 Alive Together: New and Selected Poems, Lisel Mueller
1998 Black Zodiac, Charles Wright
1999 Blizzard of One, Mark Strand
2000 Repair, C. K. Williams
2001 Different Hours, Stephen Dunn
2002 Practical Gods, Carl Dennis
2003 Moy Sand and Gravel, Paul Muldoon
2004 Walking to Martha's Vineyard, Franz Wright
2005 Delights & Shadows, Ted Kooser
2006 Late Wife, Claudia Emerson
2007 Native Guard, Natasha Trethewey
2008 Time and Materials, Robert Hass
  Failure, Philip Schultz
2009 The Shadow of Sirius, W. S. Merwin
2010 Versed, Rae Armantrout
2011 The Best of It: New and Selected Poems, Kay Ryan
2012 Life on Mars, Tracy K. Smith
2013 Stag's Leap, Sharon Olds
2014 3 Sections, Vijay Seshadri
2015 Digest, Gregory Pardlo
2016 Ozone Journal, Peter Balakian
2017 Olia, Tyehimba Jess
2018 Half-light: Collected Poems 1956-2016, Frank Bidart
2019 Be With, Forrest Gander
2020 The Tradition, Jericho Brown
2021 Postcolonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz

1. The poetry prize was established in 1922. The 1918 and 1919 awards were made from gifts provided by the Poetry Society.

.com/ipa/0/1/5/4/4/1/A0154415.html
Sources +